


The Dull Shades of Texas

by Lessandra



Category: Whip It (2009)
Genre: Character Development, F/F, Family Drama, First Time, Growing Up, Other, Relationship Is Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:43:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lessandra/pseuds/Lessandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no place for them to have this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dull Shades of Texas

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday gift for my dear partner in crime, Dodger.

Bliss is eighteen when she moves out of her parents’ house. Her mother stands in the middle of the living room, murdering a paper napkin with her worried fingers, but Bliss is resolute. She is old enough. More than that, she is finally ready.

They rent her a flat in Austin. She enrolls into Acton School of Business because she supposes it will help her find a job later in life. In full disclosure, she doesn’t care, one way or another—neither about where she studies, nor where she’ll end up. It is all boring stuff, what her life is shriveling into, but Bliss has known this is what awaits her for a long time. All the dull shades of Texas.

That doesn’t bother her so much now, because she has found something to spruce up the colors.

It used to be that she got urges to do this or that—then her inner inertia would kick in and wane the desire away. Roller derby has changed that. In it, Bliss discovers herself for what she can truly stand for. In it, she finds the thing she can cherish and make her dream.

Problem is, the world doesn’t operate on dream fulfillment. And no one’s life’s ambition can be roller derby. Bliss wonders if she can try despite that. She feels like a callow fledgeling that got out of the nest just for the sake of it, and doesn’t know how to build her own yet, doesn’t know where she wants to fly—just that she wants to. She feels like a little salmon going down with the stream, not a care in the world as to where that stream is taking her.

At the tracks, Bliss tells the girls with pride that she has her own place. She invites them over to have a little housewarming, but it doesn’t exactly work out: most of them have jobs, and the only free time they have to convene together is devoted to roller derby. But they drop by, one by one, because they are still her friends, still her family. And they’re happy that she’s moving on with her life (even if it is a little aimless).

The new season begins, they win a few games, rising steadily in rank. This year people are watching out for them, expect them to have strategies, so it’s still a challenge, maybe a bigger one than before—instead of cleaning up their act and rising to stardom unopposed, they have to fight tooth and nail for it.

Girls go out to have a few celebratory drinks. Bliss is still not old enough to drink, but they ask her along anyway, still cracking jokes about her age, or, rather, her lying about it. She passes—she maybe reckless enough for roller derby, but she still has to go to class in the morning, and reckless doesn’t equal negligent.

“So, our little ‘Babe’ is all grown-up,” a chilly voice drawls behind her, as Bliss is packing to go home.

Bliss is pleased with herself at having jumped only a little when confronted by her unexpected presence. Maven gives her a one over, and Bliss does her best to meet her gaze headstrong, tucking away the sweetness Maggie claims she has, or the fear she _knows_ she has.

“Grown enough to beat you?” she throws back, hoping it comes out sufficiently biting.

Maven’s eyes are bright with malicious fun, and she smirks. Bliss remembers that smirk: it was there when she confronted her about her age.

“Please try,” Maven says indulgently. “I love watching repeated failure.”

Bliss narrows her eyes. “Sure, laugh it up. But if you’re banking on me still being nice and taking it—it’s so last year ‘me’. So you know what, Maven?” She slams her locker shut, while the other girl is watching her with incredulous amusement. “Bite me.”

Maven’s lips curl wickedly, and she snorts. “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

Bliss’s hackles rise, because that is definitely not the comparison she has signed up for, but before she can come up with anything, or maybe throw a punch, see how that goes, Maven is out the door, sliding smoothly away on her skates.

Bliss isn’t sure what this is about. If they are enemies, or if Maven’s bullying her, or if it’s combative banter. Figuring this out is not among the top on her list of agendas. It still scores way higher than the stupid business school.

 

***

 

Bliss is twenty, when she kisses a woman for the first time. Her name is Jill, but Bliss won’t learn that for months to come, nor will use that name much anyway. On the derby tracks, they are all Malice and Annarchy and Emmagedon. On the tracks, she is, too, not Bliss Cavendar, her Dad’s little “Blister”. She’s Babe Ruthless, the fearless tiny jammer whose name is an anthem on the lips of the audience, chanted around the stadium in a staggering echo.

That is exactly what is whispered against her lips, when they collide, both on fire after a game.

 _Babe_. Like a callsign and an endearment. _Ruthless._ Both an accusation and a plea.

After a game, her blood buzzes with adrenaline, sweat prickles her skin all over, hair sticks to her forehead, and muscles ache in protest at every movement—at fingers pressing into her shoulders and her ribs until she hurts. She’s acting on autopilot, slamming the gas pedal hard into the floor, acting before her brain catches up, because she’s afraid that if she pauses to think, she’ll freeze. It is the spur of a moment—rash decisions usually are.

What Bliss whispers into the mouth under hers is _‘Maven’_ —it’s the only name she has for her.

She feels drunk. Drunk on derby. Drunk on this. Which is why she doesn’t turn back.

She expects it to hurt—somehow—even though these lips are as human as hers, made of soft flesh that is not meant for causing pain. Yet Bliss thinks it will be all teeth, scathing and sharp and _poisonous_ like her tongue. Instead, Maven’s lips are powerful but very very gentle against her mouth.

On the outside, Bliss expects it to be hard—hard to endure, hard to hide, hard to lie. It isn’t. In the end, it isn’t anything: these moments are hidden in between the pages of her life, tucked away into spaces so blank no one notices. Like it isn’t really happening. Which is why it happens again and again.

There’s no place for them to have this. Bliss is back living with her parents for the summer who are always home, always in an earshot, and Maven lives in a frathouse of an apartment. They don’t go to motels—it’s too sordid and seems demeaning; neither of them owns a car either—not that it would be a suitable alternative, anyway.

The derby ring is always crowded. So are the hot tubs where everyone expects to score, and every seemingly private nook is a magnet for another couple looking to hook up—you’re just setting yourself up to be caught. And maybe no one else will care, but they will. They don’t want anyone to acknowledge it, because neither of them does. Can’t be tucked away when it’s out in the open. Cannot have it easy. Cannot not have.

Every week they catch each other on the derby ring, and Maven’s words are always searing, and her eyes always undress Bliss—though none of the Hurl Scouts notice the latter. And she bears the words with steel proud glances, because she knows Maven doesn’t mean them. She just can’t show it any better. So they play up their animosity when in reality it is anything but.

 

***

 

“Not here! Maven, we can’t do it here! My Mom, she’ll know!—” her protests die in a gasp, as Maven silences her with a kiss. But she _will_ know, will guess with her supermom senses.

As Bliss flails in panic, Maven grabs her by the shoulders and turns, tossing them both on the floor. They fall with a dull thud (and Bliss’s constipated _unff_ —), and Maven slaps her hand over Bliss’s mouth, a mad grin on her lips. This way, it’s like derby—bruising, angular, battering, and Bliss can’t catch her breath for a long moment, because she’s the one to hit the floor first, Maven falling on top of her inconsiderately. But because it’s like derby, it suddenly feels so much easier.

Bliss is reminded of when they unveiled the first poster she starred in (she appeared in the next one, too, and then Maven reclaimed this privilege)—rolling on the floor, banana cream over Maven’s face, ice-cream dripping from hers, which all resulted in a food fight above them and in a vicious tickling match between the two of them. Maven’s eyes gleam sarcastically, and Bliss knows she’s remembering it too.

“Bliss, is everything all right?” her Mom’s pinched voice travels from the kitchen. There is a sound of chair legs scraping the floor, as she gets up, and Bliss’s eyes widen in panic, as Maven is fighting her laughter. If her Mom enters now, she is dead.

“Yeah,” she calls back, as Maven rolls off of her. “I’m fine! Just—being a klutz!” She scrambles to stand on her knees, watching the doorknob in terror. Her voice is shaking, and adrenaline is pumping through her veins. Maven is looking up at her, lying prostrate on her faded carpet, and she’s crazy, and Bliss is crazy for doing this.

Then she starts giggling. It hits her: she’s exactly the clichéd teenager hiding a boy—or, rather, a girl in her case— in her room. She’s giggling, because they’re about to fuck while her parents are in the house, as they have finally conceded to try it at Bliss’s place. No privacy. They have to steal they moments wherever they can.

She’s giggling at the thought of her mother walking in on them, clamping her mouth hard, her eyes tearing up, as she shakes her head. Maven sits up and snorts, punching her in the shoulder. “Shut the fuck up,” she hisses, but she can’t stop grinning.

Then she stands up, her knees at the same level with Bliss’s face for a moment, and she tugs Bliss to her feet before pushing her back onto the bed, then pressing her into it as she crawls to cover her with her body. “No more excuses. We _are_ doing it,” she says with a devilish grin. Bliss should say no, perhaps, but she doesn’t refuse.

Instead, she finds herself bending her legs, trying to wrap them around Maven’s waist in an attempt to grind them closer (because her crotch feels like a ticking bomb that’s about to explode). One of her bare angular knees is stabbing Maven under the ribs. She doesn’t seem to notice, busy kissing her throat and pushing up the hem of Bliss’s shirt, nails scraping the skin underneath.

When she tugs it off finally, she looms over, and Bliss feels small, like a mouse trapped under the claws of a hawk. Maven isn’t smiling anymore—she looks predatory, and there is an edge, a desperation to her hunger, that makes Bliss lift her arm and caress her cheekbone with her thumb, trace it to the corner of her mouth. It seems to break Maven out of her trance, and she shifts her position, straddling Bliss, pinning her to the matrass even tighter, as she loses her own shirt and unhooks her bra.

Seeing her naked makes Bliss scared. Makes her dizzy. That’s a first for them—the kissing, the grinding, the humping all happens while they are mostly clothed, because there is no time to undress and, anyway, it’s much easier to spring away from each other when someone enters, pretend to be ignoring each other or fighting, when you’re not flashing a bare ass or boobs. (That’s a first for Bliss overall, too—she has never seen another woman nude in her entire life.)

Maven’s skin is bronze and glistening, muscles ripping and tensing as Bliss reaches for her, pale and thin and gangly in comparison. It occurs to her that this woman pressing herself to her is forty—but she doesn’t look it. She looks perfect and fit and her breasts are hard-tipped and young, and she will be forever twenty-seven to Bliss, because roller derby seems to make her ten years younger. Bliss hopes that she makes her feel younger too.

“Should have done that sooner…” Maven mutters hoarsely against Bliss’s shoulder, winding her arms around her, unhooking her bra as well. She doesn’t beat around the bush, and as soon as the bra is flying onto the floor, Maven’s hands replace it, and Bliss moans, her eyelids fluttering. Her hands are strong, dry and warm, her fingers grazing Bliss’s nipples, making her arch into Maven.

“Jill…” escapes her lips. It’s the only thing she can think of mumbling, as she is being undone. She is at Maven’s mercy.

She’s gasping, mewling, biting her lips, her hands wandering softly over Maven’s back, tentatively travelling to her breasts as well. When they finally find their way there, Maven kisses her with renewed vigor. Her hands drop to Bliss’s flanks, thumbs pressing into angular hipbones, and Bliss suddenly realizes she’s wearing nothing but her panties. She looks down and finds that they are dressed down to their underwear. She doesn’t quite remember how Maven managed to get them both out of their trousers.

Fingers slide between Bliss’s thighs, and the thought is blurred and forgotten in an instant, as she throws her head back, hitting the pillow with a muffled helpless cry. It’s all new, this chance to explore each other fully, not through the fabric of jeans or leather, not fumbling blindly through inaccessible tightness of waistbands and zippers.

Bliss is whimpering, nearly screaming, but brings her fist to her mouth to bottle it up, as she loses all coherence. Maven’s fingers are breaching her, stroking and caressing, and her mouth is teasing her breast, suckling on her nipple, moves to her neck to bite then kiss it better, and it all brings Bliss to a sobbing shuddering delirious climax.

When they are not as breathless, Maven guides Bliss’s hand to her own crotch. Bliss isn’t good at it— _yet—_ but they can’t seem to give it up, so she knows she has all the time in the world to practice. For now, she tries to do what Maven so expertly did to her, turning Bliss into a blubbering thoughtless mess. She isn’t quite as successful, but Maven’s face is all pleasure, her eyes are closed, and she kneads her breasts, as she rides Bliss’s fingers to her own orgasm.

Afterwards, Maven doesn’t stay long. She grabs a towel, wipes herself some semblance of clean, then sits back onto the edge of the bed and slowly puts every item of clothing back: the bra, the black tanktop, the leather pants and the leather jacket. Bliss wants that jacket. She might have some fetish for items of clothing, but she wants to slide her skinny arms into those wide sleeves and sleep in it, surrounded in Maven’s scent. She wants to wear it until the scent is gone, then give it back, only for the process to repeat itself.

Maven pulls on her boots and gets up, the bed springing up without the weight of an additional body with eagerness that Bliss doesn’t share. Standing up, Maven seems to hesitate. They have never done the sentimental parting before, but this time warrants something different. Bliss watches her internal struggle timidly, with bated breath, because it’s unlike Maven to be tentative with anything.

Then she returns to the bed, and Bliss is mostly naked, while Maven is fully clothed, but she’s thinking of her being naked anyway. She now knows how another woman looks without her clothes on because they’ve made love, and isn’t that just the most insane thing you have heard in your life? What’s even more incredible is that as she’s looking down upon her, Maven’s eyes are filled with fondness. She leans in and kisses Bliss briefly on the mouth, before retreating and turning away, leaving Bliss reaching upward expectantly and needily. Like she thought that if she lingered longer, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

“I’ll see ya Friday,” she says, zipping up her jacket.

“Yeah,” Bliss exhales. Nothing else, because her head is filled with things like _You wanna go out for lunch sometime?_ or _Can I come by before that? We could chat, or maybe take a walk,_ and perhaps even a little bit with an _iloveyou_ , and generally things that have nothing to do with sneaking around for hot sex. So she keeps her mouth shut, and she will see Maven on Friday.

Maven jingles her keys—she drives a bike, of course she does—and then her black silhouette is slipping out the open window. Bliss strains her ears until she hears the engine start, roar past the house and recede into the distance. (She can imagine her mother rolling her eyes or tutting her tongue this very moment—at the vehicle that makes so much unwanted noise in their quiet suburbs, and the reckless owner who drives it.) She falls back and stares at the ceiling, not even trying to conceal her ear-splitting grin.

She has a lover she has to hide from her parents and from the world, and who hardly wants any sort of sentiment or declarations anyway. A lover who has to sneak in and out of her bedroom through the window, which is almost embarrassing, but it doesn’t stop them. They are roller derby girls, they are jammers. _Nothing_ ever stops them.

And why would they want to stop, if it works?

 

***

 

Bliss is twenty-one and thinks she has it all figured out. It does not work, after all.

Falling for Maven is one of her rash decisions, and she knows they have as much future as her career in roller derby: it is all good on the sidelines, but doesn’t work in the real world. They still sneak around, it’s all brief, jagged at the edges, and Bliss can’t help thinking that outside of it they have nothing in common. There wouldn’t be anything to talk about. Wouldn’t be anything to do outside the bedrooms and the grappling in the dark corners.

Her mother had a hard enough time accepting the derby. She will never stand for this—she’s too old-school, too ossified, too abhorrently traditional. She wishes her baby daughter to marry and give her a grandchild. Bliss hasn’t decided yet if she finds the demand more choking than all the pageants put together, or if she genuinely wants it for herself after all.

Hard to think about her mother. Hard to think about her future.

It’s different for Maven. No one tells her what to do. Because, Bliss ventures a guess, in her past everybody used to. She alienates her family because they do not understand the ambitions she has, nor the fire that drives her. At some point in her twenties, as Bliss has learnt, she got fired from a multitude of jobs for being outspoken and insubordinate. Stories she tells involve climbing trees and breaking bones when falling; sneaking out of the windows to go on raves; hijacking her principle’s sports car and going to the speedway with the hood down (which effectively terminated her studying in that school); climbing up the fire escapes of abandoned warehouses and sneaking onto construction sites—all just for the sake of the thrill.

Perhaps, like Bliss, Maven doesn’t truly know what she’s seeking. She’s all about roller derby too, about adrenaline buzz and breakneck feats and running herself hard until she’s almost frothy-mouthed, but she never actually is.        

Maven is the wind.

Bliss is earth-like. And she’s addicted to the high of her. In the full obsessive, enslaving and sinful meaning of that word.

She is twenty-one and she knows: they have got to stop.

 

***

 

A boy tries to pick her up. His name is Mark, and he is moderately suave about it, no air of sleazy desperation. He is easy on the eyes, and there seems to be something spicy to him as opposed to the crowd’s general flavorlessness.

Bliss thinks that maybe this is it, finally.

Her and Maven grow apart without goodbyes and explanations, without saying anything at all, really.

It’s _that_ easy, just like it’s always been. Which makes it so damn hurtful.

 

***

 

Bliss is twenty-four, and she wakes up to a female body pressed to hers. It fits against her as perfectly and naturally as if it was molded to do so.

She has long since stopped thinking she knows everything about life and how to live it, and they have stopped kidding themselves about each other even longer time ago. Bliss didn’t renew her rent, and Maven moved out of her crowded apartment, and they found a new place to potentially buy.

Mark didn’t really work out, ending as fast as he began. After that was Nick and Bill and Walter, and each of them drifted away, for a variety of reasons which could be summed up to different nutshells, like, “all boys are immature and stupid”, “Bliss’s taste in men sucks”, and generally “she has got to stop deluding herself”—depending on who you ask.

Thing is, Bliss discovers, there is an obvious reason why boys want to date a rollergirl: the challenge of getting her to pause enough to notice them. She embodies the thrill of the chase. But she is also scalding as red-hot metal, and after a while the heat becomes unbearable. A Rollergirl is the dream hook-up, true, but it’s Miss Blue Bonnet who ends up being the dream girlfriend—just like her mother always said. It is definitely not the girl who knocks them out of their bland over-used breakup lines so hard that she fractures their fucking jaws.

Bliss loves being chased, derives obscene pleasure from it, but when the mad run is over and they finally catch up with each other, the discovery often proves less exhilarating, not living up to the hunt. The reasons why they leave (or want to, before she blindsides them by breaking it off first) are so unimaginatively ( _colorlessly_ ) feeble she wants to explode.

It’s kind of a surprise to many, but she has a terrible temper—or, better said, it’s another thing she uncovers about herself through roller derby. Not just a little mean strike of pushing some snotty bitch from the handrail, not the daringness of screwing her first boy in a public swimming-pool after hours, nor dumping him first with an insipid slap. In time she learns control, to be all aloof and poisonous like Maven, but before that she swears like a drunken sailor and she spits and yells, her face all red with rage, because she is so done with guys who string her along without really wanting her.

Amidst all of these boy disasters, she always finds her way back to Maven.

It’s kinda pathetic the first time because she leaves, complete with self-righteousness and confidence, without looking back, so sure of herself and the choices she’s making. Some weeks later she is the clichéd picture of crawling back on her belly, banging on Maven’s door when it’s raining, all drenched and on rash autopilot again. Everything about what she does with Maven is rash, but she begins to realize that not all of it may be wrong.

When the door opens, it’s not the face Bliss longs to see. She asks for Jill. When Maven comes to the door a moment later, her face darkens at the sight of Bliss, and she half-expects to hear a fuck off as a response. She looks at Maven’s stormy face and feels stuck.

Like her life has reached the gray and boring part she’s been dreading, and nothing exciting happens to her anymore, nothing’s moving forward. Like in her aimless wandering _she_ isn’t moving anywhere. Like in the course of three or so months she let all the final colors bleed out of her.

And in the end it is Maven who is her cure-all that makes the colorless life worth bearing. It is Maven who is painting it back for her.

She doesn’t say _Fuck off_ or _I told you so_ or _Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out_. She’s pissed off, but mostly about how desperate and needy Bliss appears on her porch, with a little tremble in her voice that somehow (quite unexpectedly) is on the verge of tears. It makes Maven purse her lips and point out that unlike men she doesn’t turn Bliss into a complete and utter mess.

_“I don’t make you needy,” she says, flatly, her voice strong and assertive._

_It’s bad timing, but Bliss finds herself arching her brow all the same, “I beg to differ.”_

_Maven’s eyes turn into dangerous slits, but Bliss doesn’t heed the warning if it is one. She launches forward, fingers hooking into Maven’s pants, unbuttoning them and sliding her hands over her hard fit abdomen at the same time, not caring that down the hallway Maven has two roommates, one of whom has a boyfriend over. She gets her into the empty bedroom and drops to her knees and shows Maven just how needy she makes her._

But that’s not what Maven was saying at all. Fact is, that for all her poison and sharp edges and scorch, Maven never hurts her.

So, Bliss is twenty-four and she still believes that she needs to file herself away into a married life, imagines it as something remote but reachable, herself as an adult and in the exact same homey life her own parents lead. She doesn’t yet realize that she’s already hit that deadline, that adulthood is just around the corner, and finding a picket-fence-husband will not just magically happen overnight.

Bliss keeps looking. She keeps coming back to Maven, making a fool out of herself in the process, she’s sure. She’s not on autopilot any longer. And after a while, she learns not to leave.

She’s twenty-four when she finally comes to terms with it. This _works_ , and there is no reason why it shouldn’t continue working. Even if it’s Texas, where girls are supposed to be cheerleaders, win pageants and have pink screaming babies with boys who have it steady, because they have Big Daddies to fall back on.

Maven isn’t steady. She isn’t cheerful. She hates most females around their suburbs for being boring stay-at-home silly Stepford creatures. She finds Bliss’s optimism outrageous. She will probably never want children, and the only Daddy she could fall back on was quite a metaphoric one, in the brief six month period when she worked as an adult phone entertainer a few years back—anything to pay the bills. Her family and her don’t really get along.

But Bliss is just as staunch. She never used to skim through wedding dress magazines, dreaming of what hers will be—Shania got that gene, and in Bliss it glitched. She wanted to be a buccaneer and a jet pilot and hunt snakes in Bolivia. Her family learns to support her most challenging ventures, learns to support her derby, but she doesn’t want to fall back on them either. And she doesn’t. When worst days hit her with a sledgehammer, she always falls back on Maven.

 

***

 

Bliss is twenty-six when she comes out to her parents.

When she finally tells them, her mother cries. It does not go well, overall. Next morning, she tries again. Because, really, it’s simple like that: Maven makes her happy. In a way that no one else can or will ever live up to. And Bliss knows she makes her happy too, makes her softer and less snide and mean, and she likes that feeling.

When she tries explaining it, her Mom looks at her like she grew horns. Like, when she opens her mouth, the words that pop out are in another language that physically pains her.

It finally occurs to Bliss that what was and _is_ going on with her is beyond her mother’s recognition or understanding. No matter how much she tries to be supportive, there are certain limits she will never be able to cross. She doesn’t explicitly tells Bliss that she’s going to Hell, because she loves her. But Bliss can tell from the look in her eyes and how she purses her lips that her mother receives her daughter’s announcement as one would receive news of a minor contagious disease.

“I was brought up believing that certain things are not done by nice girls. And whatever you may pretend to be and make others believe, Bliss Cavendar, you are a _nice girl_. I brought you up to be a nice girl that doesn’t hit other girls, doesn’t drink beer and doesn’t swear like a mannerless boor. Now, I recognize that the world has changed and being bawdy with young men is no longer frowned upon, as it does not bear financial repercussions, like it did for my mother. But this is a _woman_ we’re talking about, Bliss. You cannot expect me to be okay with that. That is simply not done by my baby girl, that is not _normal!_ ” She raises her voice, and her husband has to reign her in, because she is getting a little hysterical.

Bliss doesn’t blame her. But there’s not a lot she can do about it either.

Wistfully, she remembers being seventeen and lying to her parents about roller derby. Life seemed so full of guilt and terror back then, when actually it was joyful and easy.

She goes home, leaving the issue unresolved, because dealing with it will take time. A lot of it. Maybe they will work it out, and maybe they won’t—Bliss feels sullen, but she still hopes her mother’s love for her will win out.

Maven greets her with a tight-lipped nod and politely raised eyebrows: Bliss has left to go home yesterday morning, quite abruptly, without really explaining anything, leaving Maven reserved and displeased. She’s expecting an explanation now.

Their apartment is small, the hallway opens straight to the kitchen if you look to your left, and Bliss does and sees Maven cooking. She thinks detachedly that her Mom would have been pleased to know that despite them both being unhousewifely, Maven—unlike Bliss, who for all her waitressing days has never mastered the art of preparing anything edible—is actually adept with the stove.

“Why are you so jittery?” she questions in a tone that always sounds a little interrogatory. Bliss kicks of her shoes and drops her bag beside them. Leaning against the wall, she faces the kitchen and watches Maven silently, feeling exhausted and strained, something inside her vibrating like strings of a cello that have been hit instead of played.

Receiving no answer, only Bliss’s shallow breaths, Maven stops whatever she’s doing, wipes her hands and crosses them on her chest. “What’s wrong, Bliss?”

Still pressing her back to the wall, she gives Maven a weak smile that gains in candor the longer Bliss keeps looking. This woman here is why she’s done it. “I drove to Bodeen yesterday,” she says.

“Oh?” Maven replies politely, because that doesn’t really answer anything, and returns to mixing something in a bowl.

“I told them that we’re living together.” The movement of the spoon staggers and becomes a fraction slower.

“I thought they already knew,” Maven says in a cool tone, with an underlying suspicion to her voice, because she sees what Bliss is getting at, but wants her to actually say it.

“They know the roommate part. Not the lesbian lovers part.”

Maven sets the bowl back on the counter and leans on it hard, before turning her head and looking at Bliss, something new, vulnerable and shocked hiding in her features. “You told them,” she says inanely.

And Bliss knows that Maven may act chill about it, but with all her soul-searching and going back-and-forth Bliss has hurt her, made her doubt her sincerity. And a part of her was still expecting for Bliss to realize she wants something else, pack up and leave.

That will never be the case. Bliss smiles with all her desperate love and waits for it to slowly creep onto Maven’s lips as well. Then she comes forward and kisses it.

 

***

 

Bliss is twenty-seven and she is currently not speaking with her mother.

It is the only discord she has to worry about, and despite it she finds she is happy.

 

***

 

Bliss is twenty-nine, going on thirty, when she finally gets it.

For all the dull shades of Texas in her life, she’s not living it gray. She’s living it pretty fucking incredible. Not every day may be the bright vivid splash of adrenaline, like the ‘Whip’—but it is full of colors nonetheless.

 _Maggie’s son finishing high school._  
_Pash and Dwayne getting married._  
_Finding a steady job that doesn’t suck._  
_Pash being pregnant._  
_Shania winning Miss Blue Bonnet._  
_Her mother saying she’s proud of her._

These are all the things that has made her so happy lately.

Lying in one bed with Jill is that too.

Among all the little bursts of color, her Maven-Jill is an explosion. She is miraculous. Like a tide, like a sunrise, like a lightning breaking the sky into million pieces. Maven doesn’t see it that way, struggling with the same doubts Bliss has been having—how she and her life are perfectly ordinary and she is getting older and _what am I doing with myself?_ For Bliss, Maven and her life are simply perfect and are saving her every day.

The morning of her thirtieth birthday, Bliss wakes up unexpectedly early. The clock is blinking 4.53 a.m. at her, but she finds she cannot go back to sleep. She turns to her left, her arm (no longer skinny and angular) slithering to rest against the small of Maven’s back. She looks peaceful and a little sad when asleep.

Their curtains aren’t drawn, and Bliss watches the grey clouds and the grey street growing lighter, until they aren’t grey any longer.

Bliss is thirty. The dawn is bright.

 


End file.
